Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Tomorrow night the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Committee (SPSC) will be telling the truth about you - Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

(Maserati Jews? That's how Annie Robbins, editor-at-large of the anti-Zionist blog Mondoweiss, in her infinite wisdom, calls Mizrahi Jews. Or does she mean Masorti Jews? Or a combination of the two. Anyway, you know who you are. You' re not the Aston Martin and Ferrari Jews! Despite all your valiant attempts to keep up flashy appearances, you're the 'marginalised and invisible Jews of colour').

The SPSC is visibly rattled by an episode that took place last May and is striving to do something about it. According to (another SPSC activist) Mick Napier:

"Scottish Government Minister Humza Yousaf
spoke to a meeting in Glasgow in May of this year. The Jewish Telegraph
reported that Zionists 'informed' him that "Israel's War of Independence
had created around 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries"
and that "Mr Yousaf...admitted that he had been unaware that there were
so many Jewish refugees in 1948".

Napier goes on:

"The Zionist claim conceals what Ben
Gurion called "cruel Zionism", the violent effort by the Zionist
underground in Iraq and Egypt to force the exodus of Jews who were
proving resistant to the lure of Zionism. Thirty five years after Marion
Woolfson treated this subject, Zionists still make strenuous efforts to
keep the history inaccessible. This will be one of the themes discussed
in Glasgow on Wednesday night at the Commemoration of Marion Woolfson's
life and work, dedicated to the debunking of perncious (sic) Zionist myths.
Come along."

Marion Woolfson, who died exactly two years ago, wrote a book called Prophets of Babylon: Jews in the Arab World.

Point of No Return sought a copy of Woolfson's magnum opus, but was not willing to shell out over £2,000 for the only new copy still available on this planet at Amazon.

We can guess the gist of it. In her book Woolfson blames Zionism itself for causing the mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries. Until Zionism brutally intervened, Jews were happily and peacefully coexisting with Muslims.

Marion Woolfson is in good anti-Zionist company. In his book The Gun & the Olive Branch, David Hirst describes
in detail covert Israeli operations to scare Iraqi and Egyptian Jews
into fleeing their homes for the "sanctuary" of Israel. Wilbur Crane
Eveland, a former CIA operative, wrote about the 'Zionist crimes'
against Arab Jews in Iraq (Feuerlicht, The Fate of the Jews, 231).

The late Marion Woolfson

The writings of the disaffected Iraqi Jew Naeem Giladi are frequently invoked to support this myth.The
Egyptian bombs of 1954 were indeed the work of a pro-Zionist group, but
there is no causal link with the exodus of 25,000 Jews two years
later.

In the Iraqi case no one will ever know for certain who planted
bombs in 1950 -51, but three of the five episodes occurred after the
vast majority of the Jews had already left or were leaving - and caused
no casualties. The Israeli 'new' historian Tom Segev has produced evidence blaming the only fatal bombing on Iraqi nationalists. In his book Une si longue presence,
Nathan Weinstock makes the point that only the Iraqi police possessed
the no. 36 high potential grenades used in the bombings. Besides, the
two Zionist 'culprits' executed in January 1952, whose confessions were
extracted under torture, were never accused of the fatal bombing of 14
January 1951.In any case undue focus on the 'bombs' distracts from
the overwhelming evidence of official antisemitism in Arab countries,
and does not explain the 'ethnic cleansing' of the Jews from Yemen,
Syria, Libya and other countries.

If any of you Maserati Jews happen to live in Glasgow, please attend the SPSC event tomorrow night. Don't make the history inaccessible. This is your chance to acquaint the audience with the truth. You might mention the Farhud, the 1941 pogrom in which almost 200 Iraqi Jews were murdered. You might utter the word dhimmi. You might refer to the Arab League plan to persecute their Jewish citizens before the establishment of Israel. Or you might direct your listeners to this blog....

Monday, September 29, 2014

If theJudeo-Algerian music sceneiswidely known, Judeo-Algerian literature remains totallyunknownortaboo, even if the authors supported the Algerian revolution. Amin Zaoui corrects the record on the Algerian-Jewish website Zlabia. Note that some writers, like Helene Cixous

Jacques Derrida and Jean Daniel, are not forgotten at all, but found fame in their adoptive land, France :

SadiaLevy,born inOranin 1875. Died in1951. One ofthe poetGuillaume Apollinaire'sclose friends. JeanSenactestified to andrecognizedhis debt tothe scholarship ofSadiaLevy.He wrote songswith RobertRandau, head of the Algerianliterary movement, and acollection of short stories.

AlbertBensoussanwas born in 1935in Algiers, wherehe spenthis youth. He was ahigh school teacherat the Lycee Bugeaud in Algiers(now the Lycee EmirAbdelkader ) until 1961.Algeria isverypresentin his work, especially the Judeo-Arabic world. Hisstory collectionL'Echelle Algerienneevokesdetailsthe life of thiscommunity.

In this time ofhatred and dirty holy wars,andtoresurrectthe imageof a pluralisticAlgeria, we mustnever forgettheshaheedFernandIveton,thisAlgerianJew,who died forthe independence of free Algeria. He was sentencedto deathby colonialFranceand guillotinedin 1957,and wrote:"In thelife of a man, mine haslittle meaning. What mattersis Algeria and its future,andAlgeriawill be freetomorrow. "

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Sunni social media are drawing parallels between the Islamic State army leader Khalifa Ibrahim (top right) and the Shi'ites (top left), the Christians (bottom left) and Jews at the western wall.Is their shared black garb coincidence? asks this advertisement.

With thanks: Maurice

Here we go again. Whenever forces in the Arab and Muslim world want to discredit an individual or movement - they spread a Jewish conspiracy theory. The Islamic State army, now being bombed by western forces, is a 'creation of the Jews'. This belief is being fuelled by the (Sunni) suspicion that the West has only been moved to act when minority interests are at stake.It must be stressed that there are no known Jews living in the zone of northern Iraq now controlled by IS.

The
suspicion among Arabs towards the US had increased after it started to
bomb IS positions when the latter’s
forces were 15-17 km away from Erbil, the Kurdish capital. This caused
the Arabs at large (Sunnis and Shiites) to say that the US did not care
to act when
250, 000 Arabs were killed in Syria during the last three years, and when IS
stormed
western Iraq during the last year, but it cared for the Kurds, Yezidis,
Christians…. This further fed the “conspiracy”
theory in Iraq and raised anti-Semitism in the country.

The leading Sunni scholar
Ahmed al-Qubaisi has declared that the different terrorist organisations are "a Jewish
Creation”. However, a prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric, Ayatollah
Sayed Mortada al-Qazwini, has also described IS as “a Jewish-Israeli organization,
established to tear apart the land of Muslims.”

Furthermore, an advertising
campaign against IS appearing on the Iraqi satellite television channel Afaq showed a snake
with the mark of IS coming out of the Jewish Star of David. In the image above, Sunni social media equates the IS leader Khalifa Ibrahim to
religious Jews, a Christian Bishop, and Shi'ite Muqtada al-Sadr, who have black garb as their common dress.

A rough translation of the writing at the top of the picture says:
"The
black wearing (garb) is the one that combines them and is common among
them - Is it just a coincidence, or that their Imam is One who is the
Accursed Satan"?

In
the picture, the IS leader is called "Khawarij" (i.e. one of those who
rejected the leadership of the last Rashidin Khalifa), the Shi'ite
Muqtada al-Sadr is called "al-Rafidha" ( the Shi'ites are accused of denying the
completeness of the Qur'an), a picture of Jews at the Western Wall; a bishop represents the Christians.

Several Arab media outlets have also
circulated a story claiming that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is a JewishMossad agent by the name of Simon Elliot.

Friday, September 26, 2014

Jews have had a presence in Egypt since the dawn of civilisation. The modern community was made up of indigenous Jews (Rabbanites and Karaites) and more recent arrivals from elsewhere in the Ottoman empire. Here is a timeline showing how Egypt's Jews were stripped of their rights, beginning with the right to nationality in the 20th century:

The recently restored Maimonides synagogue in Cairo

1880: 'Real Egyptian' cabinet formed. In spite of Tanzimat reforms, Jews still considered dhimmis. The middle and upper classes sought European consular protection and passports under the capitulations regime.

May 1948: arrest and internment of 1,300 -1, 000 of them Jews. Sequestration of internees' property. Jewish schools placed under government control and forced to implement Egyptianisation. Some Jews barred from higher education.

June 1948: martial law imposed. Local Jews considered a Fifth Column. Jewish assets, both communal and private seized during first Arab-Israeli war. Some 20, 000 Jews leave for Israel and Europe. Those with Egyptian nationality stripped of it.

20 June 1948: 22 Jews killed in bombings of Karaite quarter of Cairo.

July 1948: 500 Jewish shops including Cicurel and Oreco department stores bombed. A 'Zionist plane' blamed. Some 200 Jews in all killed during rioting that summer.

September 1948 : 19 Jews killed. Jewish businesses looted.

November 1948. Jewish shops looted in Cairo.

1950 (revised 1951, 53 and 56) nationality law bans Jews from receiving Egyptian nationality and allows all 'Zionists' to be stripped of their nationality.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

The traditional prayer Anenu (Answer Us) is a feature of this time of the Jewish year - a time of repentance. After a month of Selichot (asking for forgiveness), every observant Jew is ready to begin the New Year with a 'clean spiritual slate'.

This rendition illustrates how in Israel today ancient prayers from the oriental synagogue have been jazzed up and fused with modern pop to give a unique 'Mizrahi' sound.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

The Jewish New Year begins tomorrow evening with blessings for a sweet New Year. Jews of Sephardi and Mizrahi origin will do more than eat apple and honey: they will have a whole range of different foods.

Courtesy of Chabad, via JIMENA, here is what you need for a typical Sephardi seder, together with the blessings recited for each food. Note that the foods can vary from table to table: for instance, French beans are often eaten instead of white beans. Spinach replaces beetroot (in Hebrew selek) because the Arabic word for it is selk. Etc

WISHING all Blog Readers SHANA TOVA 5775!

On both nights of Rosh Hashanah,
a number of foods are eaten to symbolize our prayers and hopes for a
sweet new year. Many of these foods were specifically chosen because
their Hebrew names are related to other Hebrew words that convey our
wishes for the coming year.1 An accompanying prayer is recited, expressing our wishes inherent in these words and foods.2 Recite each prayer while holding the particular food in the right hand, immediately before it is eaten.
Before Rosh Hashanah, gather the following items:

Dates

Small light colored beans

Leeks

Beets

Gourd

Pomegranate

Apple (cooked in sugar) and honey

Head of a ram (or a fish)

After chanting kiddush, washing, and breaking bread, the following foods are eaten:תמריםDates. Related to the word תם—to end.Take a date and recite:בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹהינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הָעֵץBlessed are You, Lord our G‑d, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the tree.After eating the date, take another one and say:יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ ה' אֱלֹהינוּ וֵאלֵֹהי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ, שֶׁיִּתַּמּוּ אוֹיְבֵינוּ וְשׂוֹנְאֵינוּ וְכָל מְבַקְשֵׁי רָעָתֵנוּMay it be Your will, Lord our G‑d and the G‑d of our fathers, that
there come an end to our enemies, haters and those who wish evil upon
us.רוביא—לוביאSmall beans. Related to the words, רב—many, and לב—heart.(The following blessing over vegetables is only recited if one has not recited the blessing over bread:3בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹהינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הָאֲדָמָהBlessed are You, Lord our G‑d, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the earth.)Take some white beans and say:יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ ה' אֱלֹהינוּ וֵאלֵֹהי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ, שֶׁיִּרְבּוּ זָכִיּוֹתֵינוּ וּתְלַבְּבֵנוּMay it be Your will, Lord our G‑d and the G‑d of our fathers, that our merits shall increase and that You hearten us.כרתיLeek. Related to the word כרת—to cut.Take a leek and say:יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ ה' אֱלֹהינוּ וֵאלֵֹהי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ,
שֶׁיִּכָּרְתוּ אוֹיְבֵינוּ וְשׂוֹנְאֵינוּ וְכָל מְבַקְשֵׁי רָעָתֵנוּMay it be Your will, Lord our G‑d and the G‑d of our fathers, that
our enemies, haters, and those who wish evil upon us shall be cut down.סלקאBeets. Related to the word סלק—to depart.Take a beet and say:יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ ה' אֱלֹהינוּ וֵאלֵֹהי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ,
שֶׁיִּסְתַּלְּקוּ אוֹיְבֵינוּ וְשׂוֹנְאֵינוּ וְכָל מְבַקְשֵׁי רָעָתֵנוּMay it be Your will, Lord our G‑d and the G‑d of our fathers, that
our enemies, haters and those who wish evil upon us shall depart.קראGourd. Related to the word קרע—to rip apart, and also קרא—to announce.Take a gourd and say:יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ ה' אֱלֹהינוּ וֵאלֵֹהי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ,
שֶׁתִּקְרַע רוֹעַ גְּזַר דִּינֵנוּ, וְיִקָּרְאוּ לְפָנֶיךָ
זָכִיּוֹתֵינוּMay it be Your will, Lord our G‑d and the G‑d of our fathers, that
the evil of our verdicts be ripped, and that our merits be announced
before you.רימוןPomegranate.Take the pomegranate and say:יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ ה' אֱלֹהינוּ וֵאלֵֹהי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ, שֶׁנִּהְיֶה מְלֵאִים מִצְוֹת כָּרִמּוֹןMay it be Your will, Lord our G‑d and the G‑d of our fathers, that we be filled with mitzvot like a pomegranate [is filled with seeds].תפוח בדבשApple and Honey.Dip an apple in honey – some have the custom of using an apple cooked with sugar – and say:יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ ה' אֱלֹהינוּ וֵאלֵֹהי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ, שֶׁתְּחַדֵּשׁ עָלֵינוּ שָׁנָה טוֹבָה וּמְתוּקָה כַּדְּבָשׁMay it be Your will, Lord our G‑d and the G‑d of our fathers, that You renew for us a year good and sweet like honey.ראש כבשRam's Head (or the head of another kosher animal or fish4).יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ ה' אֱלֹהינוּ וֵאלֵֹהי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ, שֶׁנִּהְיֶה לְרֹאשׁ וְלֹא לְזָנָבMay it be Your will, Lord our G‑d and the G‑d of our fathers, that we be a head and not a tail.(The following is added only over the head of a ram:וְתִזְכֹּר לָנוּ עֲקֵדָתוֹ וְאֵילוֹ שֶׁל יִצְחָק אָבִינוּ בֶּן אַבְרָהָם אָבִינוּ עַלֵיהֶם הַשָּׁלוֹם…And You shall remember for us the binding and the ram of our forefather Isaac, the son of our forefather Abraham, peace be onto them.)

Monday, September 22, 2014

The other day I got talking to a Jewish gentleman who spent WWll in the British Air Force in Cairo and Aden.

Aden was then an important trading post and British protectorate. Our friend told how in 1945 he was welcomed by Jewish families in Crater - the Jewish quarter of Aden built in the crater of an extinct volcano - and invited for meals. The local Jews, mostly shopkeepers and traders, would introduce the British-Jewish servicemen to their daughters, in the hope that they would find them too irresistible to leave behind.

The gentleman told me that the Crater families hid in their homes refugees fleeing trouble in north Yemen. Norman Stillman in Jews of Arab lands in modern times confirms that there were some 6 - 700 Jewish refugees in private homes. The rest were housed in the Hashed refugee camp outside the town as they waited to go to Israel.

I could not find details of the specific events they were escaping in 1945. According to Tudor Parfitt's The Jews of Redemption, the Jewish predicament had deteriorated following the 1929 Palestine riots, and many were in poor health, living in dire poverty and under threat of persecution. They were desperate to leave, but the British Mandate in Palestine had a very restrictive immigration policy. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, a steady stream of Jews fled Yemen for Aden, sleeping on pavements and in shelters, with the hope of eventually reaching Israel.

Our young Jewish airman resisted all temptation to bring home an Adeni bride. Some years later, in London, he ran into a man who remembered him from those days.

He would have been demobbed when the terrible events of December 1947 erupted. A rampaging mob, incensed at the November 29 UN partition plan for Palestine, drove the Jews out of Aden. Some 50, 000 Jews were airlifted to Israel from Yemen.

Eight-two Jews died in the Aden pogrom. Jewish shops were looted. Jewish schools and cars were burnt down. Our airman would not have recognised the place.

Top: the skeleton of the George V Jewish school for boys, with the crater in the background, after it was burnt down in December 1947. Bottom: looters fight over bolts of cloth seized from a Jewish store in Crater.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Jewish shrines and synagogues in Iraq and Syria are amongst ancient archeological sites now being pillaged by Islamist terrorists. UNESCO is warning art dealers and museums not to buy valuable antiquities smuggled out of the region, AP reports:

Mural from a 2nd century CE synagogue at Dura Europos, Syria, showing the consecration of the tabernacle

The Islamic State militants seek to purge
society of everything that doesn’t conform with their strict,
puritanical version of Islam. That means destroying not only relics seen
as pagan but even some Islamic sites — Sunni Muslim shrines they see as
idolatrous, as well as mosques used by Shiites, a branch of Islam they
consider heretical.

In and around Mosul, the militants destroyed
at least 30 historic sites, including the Islamic mosque-shrines of the
prophets Seth, Jirjis and Jonah. The shrines were centuries old in many
cases.

But their extremist ideology doesn’t prevent
them from also profiting from the sale of ancient artifacts, either by
selling them themselves or taking a cut from thieves who are
increasingly active in looting sites.

The shrine of Jonah was built on top of an
unexcavated palace in the ancient Assyrian capital of Nineveh. After
blowing up the mosque, thieves burrowed underneath and are believed to
have taken artifacts, said Rasheed, citing reports from local
antiquities officials who remain in Mosul.

It is unclear how much the militants are
earning from antiquities. US intelligence officials said the Islamic
State rakes in more than $3 million a day from multiple sources,
including smuggling of oil and antiquities, human trafficking, extortion
of businessmen, ransoms and outright theft. The officials, who spoke on
condition of anonymity to discuss classified assessments, said the
militants sell goods through smuggling networks in the Kurdish region,
Turkey and Jordan.

In civil war-torn Syria, looting of
archaeological sites is believed to have increased tenfold since early
2013 because of the country’s chaos, said Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s
director-general of antiquities and museums. The past year, the Islamic
State group has overrun most of the east, putting a string of major
archaeological sites in their hands.

In one known case, they have demolished relics
as part of their purge of paganism, destroying several Assyrian-era
statues looted from a site known as Tell Ajaja, Abulkarim said. Photos
posted online showed the gunmen using hammers to break apart the statues
of bearded figures.

More often, the extremists seem to have latched onto the antiquities trade.

For example, the 2,300-year-old city of Dura
Europos is being pillaged. The site is in a cliff overlooking the
Euphrates near the Iraq border in an area under the Islamic State
group’s control, and satellite imagery taken in April show it pockmarked
with holes from illegal digs by antiquity-seekers.

Images showed hundreds of people excavating on
some days from dawn to nightfall, with gunmen and gangs involved, said
Abdulkarim. Dealers are at the site and “when they discover an artifact,
the sale takes place immediately,” he said. “They are destroying entire
pages of Syrian history.”

Dura Europos is a remarkably well preserved
cultural crossroads, a city first founded by Alexander the Great’s
successors and later ruled by Romans and various Persian empires. It
boasts pagan temples, churches and one of the earliest known Jewish
synagogues. Archaeologists in 2009 found likely evidence of an early use
of chemical warfare: During a 2nd century siege, Persian attackers dug
tunnels under the city walls and set fires that poured poisonous
sulfur-laced fumes on the Roman defenders above.

Alarmed by the militants’ advance, the United
Nations’ cultural agency UNESCO adopted an emergency plan to safeguard
Iraq’s cultural heritage. It called on art dealers and museums not to
deal with Iraqi artifacts and alerted neighboring countries of potential
smuggling.

“We are very, very, very concerned that the
situation could be aggravated in a way that causes more and more
damage,” Nada al-Hassan, of the UNESCO World Heritage Center, told The
Associated Press.

Friday, September 19, 2014

"We are dying, we are drowning," says Magda Haroun, elected leader of Cairo's Jews. In this melancholy two-minute news clip, she tells the BBC reporter that there is no future for the 12-member Jewish 'community' of Cairo.

Her first priority, she says, is to look after the human beings - the old ladies like Lucy, helpless and without family in an old age home. Then, it is to preserve Egypt's cultural and religious heritage. Magda is filmed opening the Torah scrolls of the Adly synagogue, a place of worship without Jews.

The report is forthright : the Jews, who were accused of being spies, were forced to leave in the 1950s and 1960s. As the camera lingers on Magda kissing the grave of her father at the Bassatine cemetery, it's clear that the community's only future is death.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Israelis who support Israel's right to exist are not welcome in some of Britain's leading educational institutions. Post- and anti-Zionist Israelis, on the other hand, are welcomed with open arms, writes Edgar Davidson in his excellent eponymous blog. Watch out for a forthcoming guest at the London School of Economics, Smadar Lavie: she belongs firmly in the second camp, claiming to speak for 'downtrodden' Mizrahim (oriental Jews), although her own father is actually Ashkenazi (with thanks: Michelle):

"...Israel's academics perpetrate and benefit
from the systematic discrimination against Israel's 70% non-European
majority (48% Mizrahim and 22% Palestinian). Israel's Ashkenazi
"post-Zionist" professors, brandishing their progressive politics as
they use Mizrahim and Palestinians for grantsmanship and as career
advancement tools, are just the cynical tip of this apartheid iceberg"

**********
*The 'favourable review' of Smadar Lavie's new book on the Israel-bashing site Mondoweiss, parades a familiar catalogue of lies or half-truths. It amplifies the disparaging comments which Israel's Ashkenazi leaders made about Israel's new immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa in the 1950s; claims that they were forbidden from speaking Arabic or preserving their Arabic culture; were exploited as cheap labour; that families were broken up, many children taken away for adoption, and exposed to deadly doses of radiation in order to eradicate ringworm.

I can think of no better way to rebut these canards than to reproduce this excellent comment by Mikhael, an Israeli of mixed Mizrahi/Ashkenazi ancestry, who deals, one by one, with the allegations (in italics) made by another commenter, Walid.

Walid says:
July 8, 2014 at 1:49 am....the Israeli authorities so succeeded in their de-Arabising efforts to the point
of having people like Mikhael firmly believe it never existed and never will.

To be “de-Arabized” one must first be “Arabized”.
“Arabization” actually is an apt word. Long ago, the Jews of the Levant,
Maghreb, Mesopotamia and Yemen/Hadhramaut, actually were Arabized
at one point–that is, they either had Arabic language and culture imposed on
them or were assimilated into it. But the Arab nation and culture was not their
own. That’s why the traditional Jewish term for Arabic-speaking Mizrai Jews, in
Eretz Yisrael and elsewhere, was “Mustarabim”–i.e.., Arabized Jews (and not
Arab Jews) .

Mikhael is evidently ashamed of his Mizrahi roots
and relieved that he’s the product of a mixed marriage.

Sure, I’m so ashamed of being of partial
Mizrahi-Jewish heritage that I mention it all the time. I suppose I am proud of
my Mizrahi and Ashkenazi heritage (although one should really only be proud of
one’s own accomplishments and not one’s ancestors), especially as I can count
some of the Safed Kabbalists and a Rishon Le-Siyyon (Sephardic chief rabbi)
among them. I’m equally proud of my Ashkenazi (Hungarian-Jewish) background.
Walid, you seem to think that Ashkenazi descent is something to be ashamed of.
I don’t agree with you. When my parents married in the mid-1960s, such unions
were relatively rare, but they were already increasingly becoming more common.
Today, marriages between different Israeli Jews with roots in the different
parts of the Diaspora are at around 40%.

...another into heavy denial is the “I proud of Israel”
fluently Arabic-speaking Mahane, of Iraqi Kurdish Mizrahi roots that most
probably lived with his parents in tent cities when they arrived in Israel,

It’s sweet that you mention Mahane so much. I think
you have a crush on him. If I was him, I’d be flattered. I don’t know the guy
(maybe I’ll look for his stall next time I am in the market), but if he is of Kurdish
Jewish background, the language his family spoke immediately prior to their
aliya was likely neo-Aramaic (lishna didan), possibly with Arabic as a
second language. If he is Israeli-raised, any Arabic he has most likely comes
from school or friends or self-study. I know a lot of Ashkenazim who also speak
fluent Arabic. Whether an Israeli is of Mizrahi, Sefaradi or Ashkenazi
ancestry, it’s great to know Arabic. It’s always good to know any foreign
language.

Iraqi Kurdish Mizrahi roots that most probably
lived with his parents in tent cities when they arrived in Israel,

Yup. Jewish refugees from Arab countries were
housed in maabarot, tent cities, alongside Jewish refugees from Europe, in the
impoverished Israel of the 1950s.

Something that was investigated by no fewer than
four government committees with no evidence of any conspiracy to kidnap
Yemenite-Jewish children uncovered. Exactly two cases of Teimoni children
adopted by Ashkenazi couples were discovered, and it seems this was arranged by
a corrupt social worker. Post-WW2, some 2,000 Irish babies were taken from
their unwed mothers by the Church in collusion with the government and sent
away for adoption against their mothers’ consent, in Australia, the same thing
happened with Aboriginal children. In Israel, there’s evidence of exactly two
instances of such abuses.

the infamous irradiation experiments conducted on
Mizrahi children by Israel for money in the early 50s

Israel was guilty, in the early 1950s, of being
stuck in the scientific mindset of the early 1950s, when X-Rays were considered
to a safe and effective treatment for ringworm infection. Israel treated
immigrant children suspected of having ringworm with this procedure, as this
was considered advanced and harmless procedure and was being used in the
Americas and Europe for decades. Ashkenazi immigrant kids ( from Romania,
Poland and elsewhere) who were suspected of having ringworm infections in their
scalp were also subjected to this alleged “irradiation experiment”. With 21st
century hindsight, modern medicine now knows that X-raying the soft tissue
around a kid’s skull without lead protection is not a good idea, they were less
sophisticated in the ’50s.

It’s a fact that Mizrahim had to live their Arabic
culture in secret for years to avoid being penalized in Israel. I’m guessing
Mikhael parents or grandparents are of this background.

Like many old Jerusalemite families, Arabic was but
one of many linguistic strands in our Mizrahi family–in my paternal
grandmother’s Jerusalem home (her family had lived there for about a century,
prior to Jerusalem, they lived in Galilee)–Ladino, Arabic, French and later modern
Hebrew were all used interchangeably, sometimes in the same sentence. My
grandfather was initially raised in more of a “pure” Arabic-speaking
environment, at least in early childhood–his parents came to Jerusalem from
Aram Soba (Alleppo) and Damascus in the late 19th century. Far from being
ashamed and hiding his Arabic fluency, and worrying about being penalized for
it, his native knowledge of the lingo was put to good use monitoring Arabic
radio communications for the Etzel underground and later, the IDF. My father’s
uncle taught Arabic language and literature in Israeli schools. My father
understood it perfectly, but never spoke it well. Nobody kept anything a
secret.
I was raised both in the States and Israel, I’ve studied it formally and
informally at various stages of my life in both countries. I can read it with
difficulty and have always wanted to perfect my very imperfect Arabic, as it is
a useful language to know. But it certainly doesn’t “belong” to me, even if
some of my ancestors once spoke it well, any more than Hungarian belongs to me,
just because my mother grew up in a Hungarian-speaking home. Hebrew-speaking
Israeli Jews, have no national connection to the Arab people nor the Magyar
people.

Walid says:
July 8, 2014 at 1:49 am
the Israeli authorities so succeeded in their de-Arabising efforts to
the point of having people like Mikhael firmly believe it never existed
and never will.

To be “de-Arabized” one must first be “Arabized”. “Arabization”
actually is an apt word. Long ago, the Jews of the Levant, Maghreb,
Mesopotamia and Yemen/Hadhramaut, actually were Arabized
at one point–that is, they either had Arabic language and culture
imposed on them or were assimilated into it. But the Arab nation and
culture was not their own. That’s why the traditional Jewish term for
Arabic-speaking Mizrai Jews, in Eretz Yisrael and elsewhere, was
“Mustarabim”–i.e.., Arabized Jews (and not Arab Jews) .

Mikhael is evidently ashamed of his Mizrahi roots and relieved that he’s the product of a mixed marriage.

Sure, I’m so ashamed of being of partial Mizrahi-Jewish heritage that
I mention it all the time. I suppose I am proud of my Mizrahi and
Ashkenazi heritage (although one should really only be proud of one’s
own accomplishments and not one’s ancestors), especially as I can count
some of the Safed Kabbalists and a Rishon Le-Siyyon (Sephardic chief
rabbi) among them. I’m equally proud of my Ashkenazi (Hungarian-Jewish)
background. Walid, you seem to think that Ashkenazi descent is
something to be ashamed of. I don’t agree with you. When my parents
married in the mid-1960s, such unions were relatively rare, but they
were already increasingly becoming more common. Today, marriages between
different Israeli Jews with roots in the different parts of the
Diaspora are at around 40%.

other into heavy denial is the “I proud of Israel”
fluently Arabic-speaking Mahane, of Iraqi Kurdish Mizrahi roots that
most probably lived with his parents in tent cities when they arrived in
Israel,

It’s sweet that you mention Mahane so much. I think you have a crush
on him. If I was him, I’d be flattered. I don’t know the guy (maybe I’ll
look for his stall next time I am in the market), but if he is of Kurdish Jewish background, the language his family spoke immediately prior to their aliya was likely neo-Aramaic (lishna didan),
possibly with Arabic as a second language. If he is Israeli-raised, any
Arabic he has most likely comes from school or friends or self-study. I
know a lot of Ashkenazim who also speak fluent Arabic. Whether an
Israeli is of Mizrahi, Sefaradi or Ashkenazi ancestry, it’s great to
know Arabic. It’s always good to know any foreign language.

Iraqi Kurdish Mizrahi roots that most probably lived with his parents in tent cities when they arrived in Israel,

Yup. Jewish refugees from Arab countries were housed in maabarot,
tent cities, alongside Jewish refugees from Europe, in the impoverished
Israel of the 1950s.

Something that was investigated by no fewer than four government
committees with no evidence of any conspiracy to kidnap Yemenite-Jewish
children uncovered. Exactly two cases of Teimoni children adopted by
Ashkenazi couples were discovered, and it seems this was arranged by a
corrupt social worker. Post-WW2, some 2,000 Irish babies were taken from
their unwed mothers by the Church in collusion with the government and
sent away for adoption against their mothers’ consent, in Australia, the
same thing happened with Aboriginal children. In Israel, there’s
evidence of exactly two instances of such abuses.

the infamous irradiation experiments conducted on Mizrahi children by Israel for money in the early 50s

Israel was guilty, in the early 1950s, of being stuck in the
scientific mindset of the early 1950s, when X-Rays were considered to a
safe and effective treatment for ringworm infection. Israel treated
immigrant children suspected of having ringworm with this procedure, as
this was considered advanced and harmless procedure and was being used
in the Americas and Europe for decades. Ashkenazi immigrant kids ( from
Romania, Poland and elsewhere) who were suspected of having ringworm
infections in their scalp were also subjected to this alleged
“irradiation experiment”. With 21st century hindsight, modern medicine
now knows that X-raying the soft tissue around a kid’s skull without
lead protection is not a good idea, they were less sophisticated in the
’50s.

It’s a fact that Mizrahim had to live their Arabic
culture in secret for years to avoid being penalized in Israel. I’m
guessing Mikhael parents or grandparents are of this background.

Like many old Jerusalemite families, Arabic was but one of many
linguistic strands in our Mizrahi family–in my paternal grandmother’s
Jerusalem home (her family had lived there for about a century, prior to
Jerusalem, they lived in Galilee)–Ladino, Arabic, French and later
modern Hebrew were all used interchangeably, sometimes in the same
sentence. My grandfather was initially raised in more of a “pure”
Arabic-speaking environment, at least in early childhood–his parents
came to Jerusalem from Aram Soba (Alleppo) and Damascus in the late 19th
century. Far from being ashamed and hiding his Arabic fluency, and
worrying about being penalized for it, his native knowledge of the lingo
was put to good use monitoring Arabic radio communications for the
Etzel underground and later, the IDF. My father’s uncle taught Arabic
language and literature in Israeli schools. My father understood it
perfectly, but never spoke it well. Nobody kept anything a secret.
I was raised both in the States and Israel, I’ve studied it formally
and informally at various stages of my life in both countries. I can
read it with difficulty and have always wanted to perfect my very
imperfect Arabic, as it is a useful language to know. But it
certainly doesn’t “belong” to me, even if some of my ancestors once
spoke it well, any more than Hungarian belongs to me, just because my
mother grew up in a Hungarian-speaking home. Hebrew-speaking Israeli
Jews, have no national connection to the Arab people nor the Magyar
people.

- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/mizrahi-loyalty-smadar#sthash.44WXpkCt.dpuf

Walid says:
July 8, 2014 at 1:49 am
the Israeli authorities so succeeded in their de-Arabising efforts to
the point of having people like Mikhael firmly believe it never existed
and never will.

To be “de-Arabized” one must first be “Arabized”. “Arabization”
actually is an apt word. Long ago, the Jews of the Levant, Maghreb,
Mesopotamia and Yemen/Hadhramaut, actually were Arabized
at one point–that is, they either had Arabic language and culture
imposed on them or were assimilated into it. But the Arab nation and
culture was not their own. That’s why the traditional Jewish term for
Arabic-speaking Mizrai Jews, in Eretz Yisrael and elsewhere, was
“Mustarabim”–i.e.., Arabized Jews (and not Arab Jews) .

Mikhael is evidently ashamed of his Mizrahi roots and relieved that he’s the product of a mixed marriage.

Sure, I’m so ashamed of being of partial Mizrahi-Jewish heritage that
I mention it all the time. I suppose I am proud of my Mizrahi and
Ashkenazi heritage (although one should really only be proud of one’s
own accomplishments and not one’s ancestors), especially as I can count
some of the Safed Kabbalists and a Rishon Le-Siyyon (Sephardic chief
rabbi) among them. I’m equally proud of my Ashkenazi (Hungarian-Jewish)
background. Walid, you seem to think that Ashkenazi descent is
something to be ashamed of. I don’t agree with you. When my parents
married in the mid-1960s, such unions were relatively rare, but they
were already increasingly becoming more common. Today, marriages between
different Israeli Jews with roots in the different parts of the
Diaspora are at around 40%.

other into heavy denial is the “I proud of Israel”
fluently Arabic-speaking Mahane, of Iraqi Kurdish Mizrahi roots that
most probably lived with his parents in tent cities when they arrived in
Israel,

It’s sweet that you mention Mahane so much. I think you have a crush
on him. If I was him, I’d be flattered. I don’t know the guy (maybe I’ll
look for his stall next time I am in the market), but if he is of Kurdish Jewish background, the language his family spoke immediately prior to their aliya was likely neo-Aramaic (lishna didan),
possibly with Arabic as a second language. If he is Israeli-raised, any
Arabic he has most likely comes from school or friends or self-study. I
know a lot of Ashkenazim who also speak fluent Arabic. Whether an
Israeli is of Mizrahi, Sefaradi or Ashkenazi ancestry, it’s great to
know Arabic. It’s always good to know any foreign language.

Iraqi Kurdish Mizrahi roots that most probably lived with his parents in tent cities when they arrived in Israel,

Yup. Jewish refugees from Arab countries were housed in maabarot,
tent cities, alongside Jewish refugees from Europe, in the impoverished
Israel of the 1950s.

Something that was investigated by no fewer than four government
committees with no evidence of any conspiracy to kidnap Yemenite-Jewish
children uncovered. Exactly two cases of Teimoni children adopted by
Ashkenazi couples were discovered, and it seems this was arranged by a
corrupt social worker. Post-WW2, some 2,000 Irish babies were taken from
their unwed mothers by the Church in collusion with the government and
sent away for adoption against their mothers’ consent, in Australia, the
same thing happened with Aboriginal children. In Israel, there’s
evidence of exactly two instances of such abuses.

the infamous irradiation experiments conducted on Mizrahi children by Israel for money in the early 50s

Israel was guilty, in the early 1950s, of being stuck in the
scientific mindset of the early 1950s, when X-Rays were considered to a
safe and effective treatment for ringworm infection. Israel treated
immigrant children suspected of having ringworm with this procedure, as
this was considered advanced and harmless procedure and was being used
in the Americas and Europe for decades. Ashkenazi immigrant kids ( from
Romania, Poland and elsewhere) who were suspected of having ringworm
infections in their scalp were also subjected to this alleged
“irradiation experiment”. With 21st century hindsight, modern medicine
now knows that X-raying the soft tissue around a kid’s skull without
lead protection is not a good idea, they were less sophisticated in the
’50s.

It’s a fact that Mizrahim had to live their Arabic
culture in secret for years to avoid being penalized in Israel. I’m
guessing Mikhael parents or grandparents are of this background.

Like many old Jerusalemite families, Arabic was but one of many
linguistic strands in our Mizrahi family–in my paternal grandmother’s
Jerusalem home (her family had lived there for about a century, prior to
Jerusalem, they lived in Galilee)–Ladino, Arabic, French and later
modern Hebrew were all used interchangeably, sometimes in the same
sentence. My grandfather was initially raised in more of a “pure”
Arabic-speaking environment, at least in early childhood–his parents
came to Jerusalem from Aram Soba (Alleppo) and Damascus in the late 19th
century. Far from being ashamed and hiding his Arabic fluency, and
worrying about being penalized for it, his native knowledge of the lingo
was put to good use monitoring Arabic radio communications for the
Etzel underground and later, the IDF. My father’s uncle taught Arabic
language and literature in Israeli schools. My father understood it
perfectly, but never spoke it well. Nobody kept anything a secret.
I was raised both in the States and Israel, I’ve studied it formally
and informally at various stages of my life in both countries. I can
read it with difficulty and have always wanted to perfect my very
imperfect Arabic, as it is a useful language to know. But it
certainly doesn’t “belong” to me, even if some of my ancestors once
spoke it well, any more than Hungarian belongs to me, just because my
mother grew up in a Hungarian-speaking home. Hebrew-speaking Israeli
Jews, have no national connection to the Arab people nor the Magyar
people.

- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/mizrahi-loyalty-smadar#sthash.44WXpkCt.dpuf

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

An exhibition charting the role Muslims played in saving Jewish lives in the Holocaust went on show at a Cardiff synagogue last week, the BBC tells us. Bosnian Muslims hid the Sarajevo Haggadah, a 600-year old manuscript, beneath the floor of a mosque - a remarkable story. It is a pity that the BBC does not pay equal attention to the 20,000 Bosnian Muslims who joined the Handschar SS division and took part in the killing of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Roma. (With thanks: Lily)

Stanley Soffa, chair of Jewish Representative Council for South Wales who has brought it to Wales said it was a "heroic story".

It is part of Open Doors 2014, the annual event offering free entry to many attractions throughout September.

The programme is marking 30 years of making heritage more accessible.
The Righteous Muslim Exhibition documents the story of Bosnia
Muslims who went to great lengths to preserve Jewish tradition during
World War Two by safeguarding the Sarajevo Haggadah, a 600-year-old
manuscript which narrates the Exodus from Egypt every Passover.

When a Nazi official came to seize the Haggadah, two men
carried it through Nazi checkpoints, to a mountain village above
Sarajevo. A Muslim cleric kept it hidden beneath a floor of a mosque
until the war was over.

Mr Soffa said: "The exhibition was very well received in
London last year, so we are delighted to have the opportunity to share
this story with the people of Wales... this weekend.

"For us, it is a heroic story of Muslims saving Jewish lives
which provides a unique bond between two communities that we can
celebrate together and remember together."

Monday, September 15, 2014

This summer's Gaza war has highlighted the role of the media and opinion formers in shaping a hostile view of Israel and a favourable understanding of Hamas. Two journalists, Matti Friedman (right) and Tom Gross (left), have called the biased reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict a 'political weapon -with which they arm one side in the conflict.' Lyn Julius blogs in the Times of Israel:

There are many reasons why journalists have become accessories to Hamas's propaganda war, behaving as activists rather than reporters. They relay a picture of Palestinian victimhood and Israeli extremism and intransigeance, suppressing any facts that make a nonsense of this narrative. Tom Gross identifies one reason:

" ...Many have a kind of guilt about being white and
Western, and the history of their own colonization. Israel is perceived
as a white country and the Palestinians are perceived as non-white, even
though in fact many Palestinians have lighter skin than some Israelis.
Many Western journalists abroad have barely heard of the fact that there
are Sephardi or Mizrahi Jews."

This is a key reason why organisations like mine, Harif, have been trying to raise awareness that Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews constitue over 50 percent of Israel's population.

We want people to ask why these Jews ended up in Israel. They did not move to Israel only out of Zionism, although this was a factor : the majority fled their countries as refugees - out of fear, to escape harassment, violence and death.

They fled the same conditions of intolerance and bigotry that are now forcing the other non-Muslim minorities of the Middle East to choose between extinction or exodus.

We must turn the Israel-as-colonialism narrative on its head. We must re-assert that Jews are the most ancient of indigenous Middle Eastern peoples, with a history of continuous residence in what is now known as the Arab world going back 3,000 years.

Moreover, the colonial relationship between Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews and the Arab Muslim conquerors is the exact opposite of what reporters and western observers believe: the Jews of the region are the colonised and the Muslims the colonisers. For fourteen centuries, Jews survived at the beck and sufferance of their Muslim rulers. As the historian Georges Bensoussan has explained, they sought to escape insecurity as a vulnerable minority and their second-rate status by seeking western protection and embracing modernity.

The modern state of Israel, although under attack since the day it was born, has provided Jews with the wherewithal to defend themselves. This is an affront to Muslim pride and supremacy, and a key reason why the Arab/ Islamist struggle to destroy the sovereign Jewish state continues.

The Sephardi/Mizrahi 'narrative' may not be able to reverse the supertanker of current public opinion any time soon, but it can seriously hole it below the waterline.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

A Turkish pundit writing for Yeni Akit, a major publication aligned
with President Erdoğan, called for the country’s Jews to be taxed to pay
for reconstructing buildings damaged in Gaza during Israel’s recent
Operation Protective Edge. The idea has precedence: During World War II, Jews, as well as ethnic Armenians and Greeks, were subject to an arbitrary lump-sum tax. It also has overtones of the 'dhimmi' jizya tax on non-Muslims. The Algemeiner reports (with thanks: Michelle):

Faruk Köse said that the “Gaza Fund Contribution Tax” should apply to
Turkish Jews as well as foreign Jews doing business in Turkey and any
Turkish nationals with commercial ties to the Jewish state.

The columnist even said the tax should apply to any company or business that maintains a partnership with a Turkish Jew.

“The reconstruction of Gaza will be paid for by Jewish businessmen,” he said.
The penalty for failing to pay the tax should be the revocation of
the Jew’s business licence and the seizure of his property, Köse said.

Köse also sparked controversy in July when he penned an open letter
to Turkey’s chief rabbi, calling on Erdoğan to demand that the Jewish
community apologize for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“You came here after being banished from Spain. You have lived
comfortably among us for 500 years and gotten rich at our expense. Is
this your gratitude – killing Muslims? Erdoğan, demand that the
community leader apologize!” he wrote at the time.

The article was mentioned in a subsequent open letter to Erdoğan from
Jewish human rights group, the Anti-Defamation League, calling on the
leader to “publicly reject all expressions of anti-Semitism including
the scapegoating of Turkish Jews for the actions of Israel, and assure
the Turkish Jewish community that they continue to have the full support
and protection of the state and people of Turkey.”

Friday, September 12, 2014

Summer 2014 has come and gone but the Iraqi-Jewish archive has still not been returned to that war-torn land. According to the US State department, the archive, whose highlights have been exhibited in Washington and New York, will embark on a tour of more American cities. Report in the Washington Post:

Fragment of Torah scroll (Book of Numbers)

WASHINGTON — After the U.S. Army rescued a trove of Jewish artifacts
from the basement of Saddam Hussein’s secret police headquarters, many
American descendants of Iraq’s once vibrant Jewish community had an
urgent question.
Is the U.S. going to return these artifacts to war-torn Iraq?

The
answer was yes. Over the objections of many Jews whose families came
from Iraq, the U.S. had agreed that the “Iraqi Jewish Archive,”
painstakingly restored in a laboratory outside Washington, would return
to Iraq in the summer of 2014.

But
the summer of 2014 is nearly over, and the archive is still in the U.S.
Now a new plan will delay at least some of the collection’s journey
back to Baghdad, where it had been discovered — moldy and disintegrating
— in the flooded basement of the former dictator’s intelligence
headquarters.

According to the State Department, highlights of
the archive — exhibited in Washington and New York this year and last —
will soon embark on a tour of several more American cities.

Some
see this extension — at a time when much of Iraq is in chaos — as an
opportunity to revisit the question of the archive’s destiny. They want
its Torah fragments, prayer books, documents and photographs, dating
from the mid-16th century to the 1970s, housed permanently among Jewish
communities capable of caring for them.

“There is no regard for
human life there now, so how can there be regard for our precious
legacy?” said Carole Basri, vice president of the American Sephardi
Federation, a group of Jews of Spanish, Portuguese, Middle Eastern and
North African heritage.Read article in full

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Jews in Algeria? We don't hear of them much. Could it be that there aren't many left? in the Arab imagination, however, their numbers are exaggerated (how else could one explain Jewish power?). One thing's for sure: there are not enough Jews to form a community, even if synagogues were re-opened. Officially there are no Jews left in Algeria, but as with Lebanon and Kurdistan, there could be Jews of mixed ancestry who still identify with the faith but are forced to hide their identity. Even Mohammed Aissa, minister for religious affairs, admits that if they became visible they would soon be vulnerable to attack by Islamists.

*This rare clip of a religious Algerian Jew is subtitled: Jews and Arabs lived well together. The Jew explains that he was born in Montgolfier and left soon after Algeria became independent in 1962: there was no synagogue in his place of birth, but the Jews led orthodox lives, and attended synagogue services on festivals in the neighbouring town. He went to school with Arabs and 'there was never a problem."

However, matters began to change 'after the war'. Algerians 'returned from abroad' (from Germany?) and 'began to turn against the Jews'. The interviewee does not go into detail. It is instructive that he does not blame 'Palestine' for the deterioration of Arab-Jewish relations.

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)